


Background Noise

by FancifulRivers



Series: Occasion a Day Competition Stories [23]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ableism, Bullying, Deaf, Deaf Character, Gen, Hard of Hearing, Hearing aids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:25:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4889077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancifulRivers/pseuds/FancifulRivers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mandy's deaf. She doesn't mind, but the rest of the world seems to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Background Noise

**Author's Note:**

> I do not and never will own Harry Potter.

The world is silent.

Well, sort of. The world is more like a Muggle television set turned on low, with poor reception. Words make it through occasionally, but for the most part, it's just background noise. A blur of vibration that resonates through her bones.

Her parents take her to speech therapy, but she hates it. Meaningless trappings of teeth and tongue, her hands pressed against her throat to feel the buzz of her vocal cords working. She stops going when she's ten, and ignores the pleas to continue. Her mother tells her that she has a deaf accent, but Mandy doesn't care. Her hearing aids have pink glitter on them and she changes the decorations regularly, even though she "forgets" to turn them on.

The letter from Hogwarts comes as a surprise. Her father's a wizard, but he doesn't like doing magic around the house. It makes her mum sad, because she can't. Mandy doesn't understand. Magic fizzes through her veins, warm and golden, and when she swishes her new wand, sparkles pour out in a glittering tide. She laughs and Mr. Ollivander smiles at her, a very wide, open-mouthed smile, and when he turns his head the right way, she sees he has a hearing aid in one ear. It looks nothing like hers, though, and she asks her father why.

"It's magical probably," he dismisses, but Mandy is enthralled. She searches the entire book-shop for books on hearing aids, books on what it means to be deaf in a magical world, but there aren't very many. She finds some, tucked away, pages dusty, and the clerk gives them to her for free. She doesn't understand the pain twinging her heart then, either.

Hogwarts is brilliant and Ravenclaw is brilliant, but her House-mates are not, and it takes a while to understand the difference. She's sent to Madam Pomfrey, who twitters over her and tries to touch her hearing aids without permission.

"We can fix this," the nurse says, fretting over her ears, fingers fluttering like moth wings.

"No," Mandy says, as clearly as she can. "I do not want to be fixed." (She can't be fixed anyway, her father took her to St. Mungo's when she was six, and they said it wasn't worth it to try, but she doesn't see any reason anybody else needs to know that, because her wishes are more important.)

Poppy is confused, but Mandy doesn't care. She turns her hearing aids off again as she wanders down to dinner, content in the muted hum of noise that is no longer too bright, too loud, too chaotic. It is lonely, but she doesn't mind (or pretends not to, and the pretense becomes truth, somewhere down the line).

The next year, Luna Lovegood is Sorted into Ravenclaw, and Mandy can see bright purple hearing aids hooked over her ears, and she grins so hard, it hurts.


End file.
